eBay may finally getting some serious competition

[zzyzzx]

http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/06/technology/yahoo_fees.reut/index.htm

Yahoo! cuts U.S. Web auction fees
Company says move should add sellers, denies reacting to eBay's acquisition of Shopping.com
June 6, 2005: 8:02 AM EDT

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Internet media company Yahoo! Inc. will quit charging fees for auctions on its U.S. site to encourage more people to sell their wares, the company said Sunday.

Rob Solomon, general manager and vice president of Yahoo! Shopping, denied the move was a response to top online auctioneer eBay Inc.'s announcement Wednesday that it had agreed to buy Shopping.com, a provider of online comparison shopping and consumer reviews, for $620 million.

"It's taken us six months for us to work on this. The timing of this (and eBay's acquisition announcement) is purely coincidental," he said.

Yahoo! has no plans to end the fees it charges users on its other auction sites, including the one for Japan, the company's top auction venue. The company also runs auction sites in Canada, Singapore, Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Yahoo! said its U.S. auctions will continue to generate revenue through paid search listings from its Yahoo! Search Marketing division. Paid search ads are triggered by keywords related to their product or brand.

Previously, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo! charged users of its U.S. auction site 5 cents to 75 cents to post an item, depending on the starting price of the item.

If an item sold, the user then paid a 2 percent fee that varied depending on the closing price of the item sold. More expensive items carried additional fees, in addition to the 2 percent charge, that could total up to 1.5 percent of the final price of the item.

[Darth Paris]

Yahoo auctions suck.

Search term: XBOX Games
Yahoo- 3 results
Ebay- 6264 results

[zzyzzx]

They suck because there isn't much stuff on it. But if you think back to a few years ago, before Yahoo started charging fees, they were really growing fast and would have been a significant competitior to eBay by now if they hadn't killed it off due to the fees. At least now there is a chance that might happen again, IMO.

[lordsmurf]

Yahoo auctions have always sucked for many reasons, not just volume of items.

They did not charge fees in their early days, and it did not help them much.

Beat ebay? Fat chance.

[waheed]

Beat ebay? Fat chance.

I agree. Ive got more chances of winning the lottery than yahoo beating ebay 8)

[BJ_M]

wel if anything - it might help to keep costs down a little on ebay -- they are getting to expensive

[lordsmurf]

wel if anything - it might help to keep costs down a little on ebay -- they are getting to expensive

I doubt it. eBay has never seemed to care about Yahoo. By comparison, yahoo is just playing around, not even close to serious competition. Like that ant at a picnic that's only eating crumbs in the corner, nobody really cares.

[Faustus]

I'll wait for gauctions thanks.